Elijah Muhammad - Research Paper Example

This research is going to evaluate Elijah Muhammad’s achievements in his life. The research paper also examines Muhammad’s life history and his relationship with other African-American muslim leaders like Wallace Fard Muhammad. According to Ogbar & Jeffrey (79), Elijah Muhammad was born in 1897 and at that time had a different name; Elijah Poole. According to different authors, Muhammad led African-American Muslims for 40 years. Life was not easy for Muhammad at his young age since he came from a family of 13 children.

Living conditions at the time were unbearable; he had to undergo the normal routine of helping the family raise the money for basic needs. This forced him to drop out of school early between the fourth and eighth grade of elementary school. The authors explain that most of the Southerners in Georgia had to drop out of school at a young age to take up responsibilities of assisting their parents in small jobs to raise money to help their families. The living conditions of African-American Southerners in Georgia at the time of Muhammad’s young age were harsh.

White individuals were promoting the anti-black slogan where African-Americans people were treated badly and beaten to death. Muhammad saw the white population’s brutality and decided to leave for Detroit. Two African-American people were lynched to death, which this was the turning point for Muhammad after which he decided to leave the place (Ogbar & Jeffrey 79). Muhammad moved to Detroit where he met one of the founders of the African-American Muslims fellowship, Wallace Fard Muhammad. He then changed his name from his original name, Elijah Poole, and was also taught about Islam by Wallace.

According to Muhammad (1), Elijah Muhammad’s teachings by the founder of the African-American Muslims made him expand the fellowship to other places within the United States. The encounter with the African-American Muslim’s founder and the time the teachings took place between them is estimated to be three and half years. From that point, Elijah Muhammad took over the leadership of the African-American Muslims, which is seen to have been promoted by the disappearance of Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1934.

The relationship between the two leaders of African-American Muslims, Wallace and Elijah Muhammad, started because of the suffering the African-American were experiencing from white people. According to Muhammad (1), Wallace Fard Muhammad started the movement and recruited a large number of African-Americans among them Elijah Muhammad. The teachings of Wallace are seen to have brought the African-Americans together into the formation of the African-American Muslim group. Most of the African-American were living in harsh conditions under the expense of the white people.

Wallace taught African-Americans that Christianity promoted by the whites had made them suffer and to be enslaved by the whites. Ogbar & Jeffrey (79) point out that Wallace talked to the African-American people saying that white people were not original, that they were genetically modified evils and there was a need to separate African-American individuals from the white evils. After the disappearance of Wallace, Elijah Muhammad took over, taught the African-Americans and made changes, mostly economic, which would help them move away from the suffering of the white peop